BeckerFraserPhotos April 2011 photograph 023

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A view across the river looking towards Avonside Drive, lined with road cones and Port-a-loos.

Photograph by Neil Macbeth 463

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A worker watching as his colleague releases the trailer ties that are holding port-a-loos onto a trailer.

Photograph by Neil Macbeth 477

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A port-a-loo standing outside The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Liquefaction can be seen on the footpath and road.

BeckerFraserPhotos April 2011 photograph 452

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A Port-a-loo wedged under the awning of a building on the corner of Menzies Street and Nayland Street in Sumner.

BeckerFraserPhotos June 2011 photograph 077

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A damaged port-a-loo sitting among building rubble. A skull and crossbones and the words "No go" have been spray painted on the side.

BeckerFraserPhotos October 2011 photograph 087

Images, UC QuakeStudies

Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Kingsford Street. Look at the number of Port-a-loos and the tanks for emptying chemical toilets in this street".

BeckerFraserPhotos February 2011 photograph 396

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A woman walking beside the Avon River. Across the river a Port-a-loo has been set up for residents without functioning sewers as a result of the 4 September 2010 earthquake.

BeckerFraserPhotos February 2011 photograph 397

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A view across the Avon River from Avonside Drive to a Port-a-loo that has been set up for residents without functioning sewers as a result of the 4 September 2010 earthquake.

BeckerFraserPhotos February 2011 photograph 301

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A woman walking beside the Avon River on Avonside Drive. Across the river a Port-a-loo has been set up for residents without functioning sewers as a result of the 4 September 2010 earthquake.

BeckerFraserPhotos December 2011 photograph 2446

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "A residential property at 464 Avonside Drive. The holding tank in the garden means the inside toilet can be used, rather than relying on a Port-a-loo.

BeckerFraserPhotos April 2011 photograph 035

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A view down New Brighton Road where silt from liquefaction still remains on the street curb. A power pole in the foreground is on a noticeable lean and a Port-a-loo can be seen to the right.

BeckerFraserPhotos October 2011 photograph 427

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A pile of rubble on the corner of Manchester and Worcester Streets. In the background, the Design and Arts College and the Heritage Hotel can be seen.

The Management of Portable Toilets in the Eastern Suburbs of Christchurch …

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

The extent of liquefaction in the eastern suburbs of Christchurch (Aranui, Bexley, Avonside, Avonhead and Dallington) from the February 22 2011 Earthquake resulted in extensive damage to in-ground waste water pipe systems. This caused a huge demand for portable toilets (or port-a-loos) and companies were importing them from outside Canterbury and in some instances from Australia. However, because they were deemed “assets of importance” under legislation, their allocation had to be coordinated by Civil Defence and Emergency Management (CDEM). Consequently, companies supplying them had to ignore requests from residents, businesses and rest homes; and commitments to large events outside of the city such as the Hamilton 400 V8 Supercars and the Pasifika Festival in Auckland were impacted. Frustrations started to show as neighbourhoods questioned the equity of the port-a-loos distribution. The Prime Minister was reported as reassuring citizens in the eastern suburbs in the first week of March that1 “a report about the distribution of port-a-loos and chemical toilets shows allocation has been fair. Key said he has asked Civil Defence about the distribution process and where the toilets been sent. He said there aren’t enough for the scale of the event but that is quickly being rectified and the need for toilets is being reassessed all the time.” Nonetheless, there still remained a deep sense of frustration and exclusion over the equity of the port-a-loos distribution. This study took the simple approach of mapping where those port-a-loos were on 11-12 March for several areas in the eastern suburbs and this suggested that their distribution was not equitable and was not well done. It reviews the predictive tools available for estimating damage to waste water pipes and asks the question could this situation have been better planned so that pot-a-loo locations could have been better prioritised? And finally it reviews the integral roles of communication and monitoring as part of disaster management strategy. The impression from this study is that other New Zealand urban centres could or would also be at risk and that work is need to developed more rational management approaches for disaster planning.